Monthly Archives: October 2013

There are very few reports on the state of women in the world that manage to generate interest from more than just us gender geeks. The World Economic Forum‘s annual Gender Gap Report is one of them. It provides solid analysis of reliable data, and cleverly packages this in a framework that makes perfect sense and manages to be useful at the same time. The 2013 edition is being launched today and as the WEF was kind enough to send me an advanced copy, I have had time to comb through the report and here are my insights.

For those who are unfamiliar, the Gap Report is predicated on the assumption that gender equality progress can be measured through the narrowing of gaps between men and women in certain areas, including the economy, education, health and political participation. Meaning, if female literacy goes up, the levels of gender equality go up. Within each of these categories we find the usual suspects, like primary, secondary and tertiary enrollment rates, life expectancy and female seats in parliament. These stats are widely cited when discussing low income countries (as they form MDG targets), but since the Gap Report is global, we get to scrutinize medium and high income countries which is a nice change.

The Gap Report pulls these together to create a rating system that uncovers difference between countries and progress made over time. For instance, country A will score highly on political participation if women hold half of the seats in parliament, but might get a low score in education as there are more males than females in tertiary education. The report takes into consideration only the outcome of these measures, rather than inputs that may vary between high income and low income countries. So you might expect the UK to do really well as it has a lot more money to spend on education than Lesotho, but in terms of the gaps between boys and girls in educational attainment in absolute terms, Lesotho is doing better than the UK. The final ranking takes into account all four indexes and churns out a total rank.

Unsurprisingly, the Nordic countries have jealously kept the top 4 places in the Gap Report rankings to themselves for the past 6 years. A newcomer to the top five this year is the Philippines, who’s up from number eight last year. A closer look reveals that Philippines has made some progress on closing the gap between men and women in terms of political participation and holding decision making positions. New Zealand, now at number seven, has slipped down a place due to a decrease in wage equality and Switzerland moved up a spot due to improvements in women’s estimated earned income. Nicaragua, remains the only Latin American country in the top 10 and made huge progress between 2011 and 2012, jumping from the 27th to the 9th place, mainly due to increases in women’s political and economic participation rates. Another newcomer to the 2013 report is Lao PDR, which ranks 60 overall (not bad!), but interestingly rates quite highly in terms of women’s economic participation.

Countries that have done really well over the past year include Bangladesh, which currently ranks at 75, a rise of 10 places. This is mainly due to a significant narrowing of the gender gap in education and an increase of women in the political sphere. Countries that continue to do badly include Israel, my home country, which has slipped 20 places in the past six years. oy vey.

According to the 2013 report, looking at the rankings of the past six years reveals that: ‘the 136 countries covered in the Report, representing over 90% of the world’s population, have closed almost 96% of the gap in health outcomes between women and men and almost 93% of the gap in educational attainment. However, the gap between women and men on economic participation and political empowerment remains wide: only 60% of the economic outcomes gap and only 21% of the political outcomes gap have been closed”.

To my mind, what is really striking about the Gap Report rankings is the correlation between countries with economic prosperity and higher levels of gender equality. And considering the audience of this report, which really aims to engage the businesses and corporate executives in an issue that is still firmly viewed as a ‘third sector’ issue, it really serves its purpose well.

The Gap Report’s ability to provide a global ranking system that scores countries according to progress towards gender equality is very interesting, but it fails to provide the reader with an understanding of how these processes have occurred and whether there is any connection between closing gender gaps and reducing gender inequality. The report doesn’t set out to do these things and the disclaimer on the first page makes this very clear. But I for one would like to perhaps see a spin off publication that delves deeper into a number of countries that have made significant progress in their rankings, and look at whether this correlates with other human development and women’s rights indicators. Otherwise it all seems like a pointless exercise.

I’m unclear as to whether women’s political participation, i.e. holding more seats in parliament, has actually translated into policy decisions that have benefited women? and anyone who knows anything about education figures will gleefully inform you that enrollment data is a terrible indicator because it is collected usually once a year on the first day of school and provides no indication of whether the pupil then actually attends school. Not to mention the fact that it doesn’t give you a clue as to whether this enrolled pupil who may or may not be attending school regularly, is actually learning anything at all.

That said, the attempt to provide a global index on gender equality that appeals to people other than those who think UN document serial numbers are cool, is a blessed endeavor and i do encourage the WEF to continue their good work!

Check out an article by Linda Raftree and myself on integrating ICTs into C4D work with marginalized adolescent girls, which is based on a UNICEF report that we wrote a while back. It was posted in the Guardian today for International Day of the Girl, and it links our research from the report with the issue of ‘innovation for girls education’. You can read the article here and you can access the full UNICEF report here.

below is a short summary of the report:

Social, cultural, economic and political traditions and systems that prevent girls, especially the most marginalized, from fully achieving their rights present a formidable challenge. The integration of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to the Communication for Development (C4D) toolbox offers an additional means for challenging unequal power relations and increasing participation of marginalized girls in social transformation.

Especially during puberty, various forms of discrimination and exclusion intersect to increase adolescent girl’s marginalization. At the same time, interventions aimed at adolescent girls have the most transformative potential as they can significantly alter a trajectory of vulnerability by reducing the prevalence of various forms of discrimination such as early marriage and early pregnancy.

The report shows how ICTs can play a role both in empowering adolescent girls and in reaching or engaging those around them to create enabling environments for girls.

In the report we examine ways that ICTs can strengthen C4D programming by:

enhancing girls’ connections, engagement and agency;

helping girls access knowledge; and

supporting improved governance and service delivery efforts.

We reflect and build on the views of adolescent girls from 13 developing countries who participated in a unique discussion for this paper, and we then provide recommendations to support the integration of ICTs in C4D work with marginalized adolescent girls, including:

Girls as active participants in program design. Practitioners should understand local context and ensure that programs use communication channels that are accessible to girls. This will often require multi-channel and multiple platform approaches that reach more marginalized girls who may not have access to or use of ICTs. Programs should be community driven, and real-time feedback from girls should be incorporated to adjust programs to their needs and preferences. Mentoring is a key component of programming with girls, and holistic programs designed together with girls tend towards being more successful.

Privacy and protection. Every program should conduct a thorough risk analysis of proposed approaches to ensure that girls are not placed at risk by participating, sharing and consuming information, or publicly holding others to account. Girls should also be supported to make their own informed choices about their online presence and use of ICT devices and platforms. A broader set of stakeholders should be engaged and influenced to help mitigate systemic and structural risks to girls.

Research and documentation. The evidence base for use of ICTs in C4D programming with marginalized adolescent girls is quite scarce. Better documentation would improve understanding of what programs are the most effective, and what the real added value of ICTs are in these efforts.

Capacity building. Because the integration of ICTs into C4D work is a relatively new area that lacks a consistent methodological framework, organizations should support a comprehensive training process for staff to cover areas such as program design, effective use of new ICT tools in combination with existing tools and methods, and close attention to privacy and risk mitigation.

Policy. Programs should use free and open source software. In addition, child protection policies, measures and guidelines should be updated to reflect changes in technology, platforms and information sharing.

In this guest post, Keshet Bachan, gender equality activist and blogger at The XX Factor, questions whether mobile phone applications addressing street violence are an effective way to prevent violence against women. What do you think?

Can mobile ‘apps’ really prevent or discourage instances of violence against women? This question has been on my mind since a colleague shared this video from Voice of America about a mobile app called ‘Fight Back’, marketed as ‘India’s first mobile app for women’s safety’.

The video sparked an email discussion that raised some interesting questions that deserve a closer examination.

The VOA story provides a holistic view of violence against women and the developers of the mobile phone application admit that they are but one element in a broader system that needs to respond to instances of violence. They discuss the involvement of police and other duty bearers, such as…